


We'll Burn that Bridge when We Get to It

by Eve_H



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crack Treated Seriously, Crimes & Criminals, Fluff and Crack, Fun, Gen, Investigations, Mystery, Partners in Crime, Prague
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eve_H/pseuds/Eve_H
Summary: In the world currently experiencing a B-rated mashup version of every apocalypse movie ever, a trio of friends almost comes close to uncovering a national conspiracy while looking for a lost cat during lockdown in Prague.Because - what the hell - why would anyone steal a cat?





	We'll Burn that Bridge when We Get to It

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first published original story so any feedback is welcomed. Yeah. Right. Just compliments, my ego is too fragile to handle good constructive criticism :).

Damon has already been up for more than 24 hours by the time their plane lands at the Prague airport. They disembark the plane while trying to look as close to inconspicuous as possible, which doesn’t say much, considering the fact they are the only people on the runway. Air traffic has died down significantly since the beginning of the current B-rated apocalypse, and they sneak back into their home country with green passports of civil servants.

  
Damon politely doesn’t snicker when the customs officer sees the green on their travelling documents and waves them in without even taking a look, while all around the world people are required to show their family tree up to sixth generation and promise the blood of their future son just to be able to enter the country they finance with their taxes.

  
“Lol,” he hears from behind, his best friend apparently not having as good a grip on his mouth-to-brain filter as Damon himself. Thankfully, the officer looks even more dead inside than Damon’s dad after witnessing thirteen-year-old Damon put a lightbulb in his mouth and subsequently persuading all dad’s colleagues in Operations to do the same, resulting in five ex-military and ex-police guys running in panic, realising it was true that you couldn’t pull it back out. The doctor on their payroll got a large sum of money just so he would never ever mention it again, their Legal having come to the conclusion that the normal NDA didn’t cover that level of stupidity.

  
The giggle gets Ace a smack upside his head from the other third of their travelling party, the self-proclaimed ‘only sane person’ Gabrielle. The smack echoes loudly in that cave of a baggage reclaim hall, making Damon feel better instantly.

  
“Be glad you get to travel.”

  
And isn’t that the mantra they’ve been repeating at various times throughout their recent business trip. Like during their eight-hour layover in Istanbul where the amenities of business lounge were taped off and the buffet was catered by an overly enthusiastic guy who fulfilled every Turkish stereotype in a way that made their gen Y group despise him out of respect for the evolved societal norms. But the way he would introduce each item on display and ask if they wanted one was funny enough to distract Ace and Damon from the never-ending boredom of an international airport during a pandemic, more similar to a shopping mall the morning after Black Friday than a supposedly busiest travel hub in the world. Although the judging stare of their blonde friend made it obvious they had brutally murdered the last miniscule shreds of respect Gabrielle had ever had for them.

  
Waiting for their luggage, Ace gets down to proclaiming his superiority by showing a riveting portrait of an unmoving belt on his Instalive. Gabrielle and Damon move in sync to prevent themselves from being in the frame, rejecting Internet fame in a knee jerk reaction of those who have to live with the knowledge that people much younger and much less intelligent become millionaires through the means of social media.

  
Airport security eyes them warily with the kind of detached interest, probably rooted only in the fact that they must be the first travellers gracing the pristine floors of Prague airport in quite some time. Ace snaps a picture of one of the guards with a vague disclaimer of privacy rights on par with the Apple Terms of Services, and Damon feels sympathy for the poor guy who most likely wishes for some suspicious activity that would justify him shooting all three of them and claiming self-defence.

  
Their luggage arrives and they leave the transit, leaving the unnecessarily foreboding “point of no return” sign behind without second thought.

* * *

They drop Ace at his dad’s mansion where he quarantines since there’s literally everything anyone could ever want. Damon, a gentleman at heart, takes one of Ace’s father’s cars and drives Gabrielle to her flat. Ace cackles loudly while he tosses his car keys to Damon.

  
“Is he okay?” Gabrielle asks when Damon turns the key in ignition and manoeuvres onto the drive.

  
“It’s Ace.”

  
And Gabrielle, the absolute treasure who understands the bane of Damon’s existence, nods and laughs. He concentrates on driving while she looks out the window into the dark. Parts of Prague flicker when they get closer to the city centre.

  
“You tired?” she asks.

  
“I think I won’t get tired for another two days.”

  
“Yeah, I think you might’ve actually broken the world record for the most Red Bulls drank in a day,” she concurs, then adds, “thank God we got rid of Ace already. I don’t want to be there for that.” Damon pities Ace’s father for having to deal with over-caffeinated three-year-old with access to Tik Tok’s never-ending supply of challenges. Even without the help of questioningly legal substances, Ace is the type to lick the toilet seat in an airplane to show middle finger to natural selection and proving that even the new coronavirus is too proud to infect this moron. His only saving grace is the fact the older members of their family have yet to understand that a “viral star” is a really just a shorthand for imbecile.

  
“I don’t understand why they banned alcohol but still allowed energy drinks,” he hears Gabrielle mutter.

  
“They probably don’t know either.”

  
She laughs. “That doesn’t give me much confidence in our leaders.”

  
“You think that was taped off because of legislation? I thought the director was just tired of chasing drunk people through empty terminals.”

  
“Who knows,” Gabrielle shrugs, “be glad you got to travel…”

  
They’re silent again. Night drives do that to people, Damon thinks. It’s quiet and peaceful, no cars, no people around, just the sound of engine and smooth concrete of the road. He thinks Gabrielle is slowly falling asleep.

  
He would be, too, if he wasn’t starting to feel antsy, first evidenced by his fingers drumming a silent melody on the leather of steering wheel without permission. He focuses on keeping them still but that quickly leads to almost running over an idiot who absolutely shouldn’t be crossing a street at 2 AM.

  
“Good to know they’re still enforcing the curfew with the same enthusiasm,” Gabrielle giggles, unaffected by almost being a witness to vehicular manslaughter, and Damon knows from her voice she is half asleep still and maybe thinks this is all a dream.

  
Damon’s fingers return to drumming I’m Blue (Da ba dee da ba di).

* * *

At half past two, they finally take a left from the ninth literal circle of Hell that is the motorway ring around the Czech capital. Gabe takes over the navigation towards her building, remembering just as well as him the last time, when they trusted Waze to get them there. Which it did, although it took them in such a roundabout way including three one-way streets, a tunnel to nowhere, and possibly a Stargate, to come up to Gabrielle’s street from the wrong direction. Mind you, the street Gabe lives on is a dead-end street.

  
“Thank you for driving me home.”

  
“No problem.”

  
She says something more that he can’t hear because he’s already running around the car to open the door for her. Then he moves to unload her small luggage from the back and brings it onto the sidewalk to her.

  
In a perfect rendition of a shy, polite girl, he wrangles the handle of her bag in her hands when she says: “I’d invite you up but-”

  
“Yeah, I know.”

  
He knows. She glances up at him apologizingly.

  
“You know, you’d prob’ly be friends if you tried,” Gabrielle reasons and oh my God, that sounds like it’s Damon’s fault for not getting along with Gabe’s current flatmate and it’s definitely not. He’s not taking blame for it, even if his traitorous heart whispers that he could make more effort to show Gabe how much he cares. Well, his pathetic heart can shut the fuck up because Damon has driven her all the way to the South side of Prague feeling like Vergilius, if that doesn’t show he cares then nothing does.

  
“I know,” he finally settles on, “I try. I should probably go check on Tweedle Dum anyways.”

  
“Take a video of anything funny he does.”

  
“I don’t think he’ll do anything anyone normal would classify as funny.”

  
“Okay, then just snapchat me any dumb stuff he’ll do.”

  
That, he can do. It shows how old they are that they still use Snapchat, even though Gabrielle is the sole reason he downloaded it at all and suspects he’s Gabe’s only contact there as well.

  
He turns to return to the car, she picks up her bag and leaves for the door.

  
They don’t exchange goodbyes. Once, he read a surprisingly insightful book that he found in the joke gifts section of some bookstore. Trying to introduce Czech psyche to foreigners and claimed that the closer the relationship, the less greetings are exchanged. Damon quite likes that sentiment and usually makes himself feel better by remembering this every time Gabe doesn’t say goodbye. But on the darker days he takes it as a sign of her disinterest in him as anything but a glorified driver.

  
At 3 AM, cities are lawless places. The absence of traffic means Damon revvs the car up and takes a sharp turn to make the side of the road he’d like to take, pretending that road rules are nothing but guidelines. He puts the radio on, pretending he hates Ace’s Daft Punk rip off while humming along to Miami 84 synthwave song that goes uncomfortably well with driving at night.

  
His phone rings almost to the tune of the new song and Damon startles with the knowledge that it’s 3:15 and basically resigned himself to dying in some upgraded reboot of the Amityville-Ring phone crossover where he didn’t even get to watch a movie beforehand.

  
”Hey, Dame?“ it’s Gabe’s voice, tight and controlled, “where are you? You close enough to come back?“ before letting go and injecting a bit of soul-crushing hurt into her voice, “It‘ Leo. He’s missing!“

  
“Oh.“ he says and then his eyes widen a he grins, “are you trying to say I could’ve come up?!“

  
“What- oh my god, no, Damon, he’s missing, that’s what I was trying to say! And what I said,“ she grumbles at the end.

  
He pulls to the curb and stops. His cardiovascular system is currently dancing MC Hammer Dance to its own melody and he can’t focus both on driving AND talking.

  
“How you know Leo’s missing? Maybe he’s just hiding somewhere…“

  
“The door were open.”

  
“The door- what?“ he shrieks and what the hell? „what door?“

  
“The front door,“ Gabrielle explains in a tone reminding Damon of his Civics teacher that time Damon tried to be active in his classes and tried to understand the American electoral system, “he must have gone exploring and, I don’t know, got scared and ran or something.“

  
She doesn’t ask if he would come again but Damon steers the car to the opposite lane without second thought.

  
“Okay, yeah. I’ll be there in five.“

  
“Thanks. You’re the best!“

  
Yeah. He bets.

* * *

Damon Kohl is the person to call in emergency. Growing up with an ex-military, former police officer for a father who established tentatively a private intelligence agency with his two friends, his summers were filled with running through the Doupov military site with a gun in his hand, getting shot at by his dad and uncles and doing drills in hot sun because he was best friends with Ace Carter, whose rejection of any kind of authority would be endearing in a story but absolutely infuriating in reality.

  
This, plus the Red Bulls still coursing through his veins, makes him excited to look for Gabrielle’s feline roommate.

  
Gabrielle’s waiting for him in front of her building. Damon stops the car confidently next to the no parking sign and gets out. The first thing on his mind is to ask her if she’s okay because the smudges under her eyes that she obviously tried to minimise, and the blond hair pulled up to a messy bun shows Damon the nonchalant approach to her front doors being unlocked was just a façade. She’s still in the clothes she travelled in but her bag is not there so Damon assumed she went upstairs.

  
“He’s missing?” is the first thing he asks in the best imitation of his father’s voice.

  
She nods.

  
“How-?”

  
“The door were open when I came in-“

  
“Yeah, that. Did you call the police yet?”

  
There’s a foreboding silence that he links to the sleep deprivation, before a defensive reply: “no.”

  
Vaguely, he wonders why he assumed that the rising star of their Analytics department who’s accustomed to dealing with international crises, has basic life skills. So rather than calling the police, admittedly the most helpful option in this situation, she drags Damon to aid her in some haphazardly slapped together investigation based on memories of drunken NCIS marathons. With the surety of politician, she ignores the admittedly more important evidence of break-in into her apartment and focuses exclusively on the sob story of a missing cat.

  
“I need to get Leo!” she declares again.

  
“I mean… you should probably call the police. Somebody broke into your flat.” He doesn’t think he’s that unreasonable.

  
“Nothing’s got stolen.”

  
“Someone breaks into your home and doesn’t steal anything?” he stops and looks at her directly, “did you look thoroughly?”

  
Well, she’s thoroughly looking at him now, with one fine eyebrow raised, and Damon’s self-preservation instinct gets triggered. He raises his hands in defeat: “okay, okay, chill.”

  
“Don’t tell me to chill! Leo’s missing! We need to track him down. He’s probably scared out of his mind, he couldn’t have got far. He’s probably somewhere around here.”

  
He’s still not totally on board with not calling the police asap but if Gabrielle thinks it’s way down on their list of priorities then that’s for her to decide. He wasn’t planning on spending his taurine-induced all-nighter hunting for a lost cat. They always say girls don’t want nice boys and this is all the way into Clark Kent nice territory that he just doesn’t feel right. So he puts on his bad cop persona and asks professionally: “You checked inside?”

  
“Yeah. Nothing.”

  
Damon’s gaze sweeps across their surroundings. There’s no snow to track paw prints in, no mud to give them any idea where it could be. But he feels Gabrielle is on the verge of tears - she loves that cat - and even though he feels this is not what his ex-military, ex-police dad had in mind when he thought them basic investigative skills, he sweeps the street again with a calculating look.

  
He sort of wishes there’s a sudden poof of sparkling air with a 10-pound cat appearing out of thin air with a bow and colourful paper sparkles, but the promising gleam on façade of the neighbouring building which, he quickly discovers, is a CCTV camera, works too. From his place, it looks like it points in the right direction and, theoretically, there could be footage of movement through the front door to Gabrielle’s building. If they’re lucky.

  
He hears soft voice calling for Leo farther down the street.

  
“Look!” finger pointing towards the camera, he whispershouts because if he’s putting on a Steve Rogers persona, he might as well have some compassion for the sleeping. There’s a slight nod that lets him know she heard him.

  
“Leeeooo!” Gabrielle doesn’t have the same inhibitions, apparently.

  
Waiting for her to get back, Damon is reminded of how much he hates the cat. And the cat hates him, he’s sure of it. Leo the Cat is an unnaturally large not-Maine Coon with brown-black fur and a tail that can easily be confused for a duster. Gabrielle rehomed it out of blue in January last year and Damon only learned about it after receiving a cute photo of the cat sleeping in Telegram two weeks later when Leo came out from behind the kitchen counter, where he played dead without telling Gabe first so she wouldn’t spend two weeks almost crying trying to get him out. That alone made Damon angry with the cat. It was petty and he knew it and still brought him California rolls and smoked salmon first time they met to honour the deity.

  
And in a parallel to how believers must have felt when the world plunged into a global health crisis, the unsmiling god took the offerings and still left a wet mouse toy in his shoe. Gabe didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t amused but didn’t apologize on her cat’s behalf, instead cooing at the animal for being so smart to dunk the toy in his water bowl first.

  
Gabrielle slowly wanders back to Damon, calling out for Leo every other step.

  
“Oh,” she squints at the camera, “do you think-?”

  
“The angle seems right.”

  
“You wanna get the footage?”

  
He nods: “We’ll see where he went. If he got out.”

  
“Trust me. He’s not inside,” Gabrielle informs him and Damon so hopes it turns out Leo is chilling in her flat in a bathtub chasing rubber ducks, “how’re we gonna get it?”

  
“I’ll call Ace.”

* * *

The fact that Ace doesn’t answer on the first ring makes Damon irrationally fear that he knocked himself unconscious trying some dumb stunt and Damon wasn’t there to preserve it for posterity on his iPhone.

  
Finally, he hears “Hello, yes, this is Ace Carter’s phone,” comes the unexpected voice.

  
“Nick?” Damon asks, wrecking his brain for any reason why his friend would let his dad answer his phone calls and coming up with nothing safe for scenarios full of death and mangled appendages. But Nick’s voice doesn’t sound upset. Although he might be still riding the adrenaline wave that witnessing Ace do anything stupid/dangerous/stupid usually brings. It makes Damon remember many events in much more fondly than an open arm fracture is probably supposed to warrant.

  
“Looking for Ace? The dumbass can’t come to the phone. He’s trying to break a record in uninterrupted game of ping pong played by a single player.”

  
There is a beat of silence. In distance, plastic bat hits plastic ball, followed by the tell-tale sounds of ball jumping across a table and fast shuffling of socked feet sliding on wooden floor.

  
“Is there a record to break?” Damon asks curiously while sipping water through a glass straw from a glass tumbler.

  
After the discovery of the CCTV camera, Damon dragged Gabrielle back upstairs to her flat. The lock was broken and the apartment was a mess of papers, books and broken glass that the blonde tried hard not to notice. But Damon knew her well enough to see she was close to crying.

  
“You okay?” he mouths.

  
“Will be better once Carter gets his ass over here and hacks that camera,” she grumbles from the armchair opposite him before standing up and moving to the window. Her eyes are tracking for any movement indicating Leo changed his mind and decided living on the street really wasn’t preferable to being fed grilled salmon and high-end tuna.

  
Meanwhile, Nick is apparently set on making a proper conversation, starting with: “What’s up?”

  
“What are you doing up, more like it.”

  
“Do you not know my son?” Nick asks seriously, “I had to make sure he doesn’t try jumping into the pool from the rooftop. There’s no water and I don’t trust him not to jump anyways. So, why are you calling at four in the morning?”

  
“We might need his help hacking a security camera.”

  
“Uhmphf. Why?”

  
Damon opens his mouth to explain the situation when Gabrielle stalks to him and with a single gesture gets the phone passed over to her.

  
“Hey, it’s Gabe,” she starts sweetly and explains with a succinctness honed by months of briefing her boss, “we need Ace. My cat got lost!”

  
“LEO GOT LOST?!” Nick screams.

  
Damon blinks. For a beat, the only sounds on the other end is a plastic bat hitting a small plastic ball again and again, slowly chipping away at any sanity left in the world with the enthusiasm of Abe Lincoln in that one 2012 by-product of Dracula falling asleep on top of an American History book.

  
“Yeah!” Gabrielle wails, satisfied someone finally understands the gravity of the situation.

  
It’s not like Damon’s heartless. He just can’t muster the same amount of over-the-top expressive energy that the Gabčík/Carter familia can. Usually, this is something that he knows Gabrielle understands and even likes about him. The lack of drama, the levelheadedness. But right now, it’s obviously not what she wants while dealing with a personal tragedy at four AM without the help of a caffeine-taurine induced race with death trying to claim his heart in a vice-like grip of a heart attack.

  
“Someone broke into my flat and left the door open and I guess Leo must have gotten scared and ran out and he’s usually so afraid, I don’t know why he didn’t just disappear behind the kitchen counter like usual!”

  
At that, Damon doesn’t question if Gabrielle would be okay with being robbed if they had only closed the door on their way out, and moves to the kitchen in a corner of the room and kneels down to look under the counter, searching for any sign of the dust bunnies not being made of dust, or being, you know, bunnies. But all he does is find that Gabrielle the Clean Freak apparently sweeps even under the counter and somehow, by some insane gymnastic trick, even manages to clean away the dust behind the counter because the space is spotless.

  
“SOMEONE BROKE INTO YOUR FLAT?!” he hears Nick shout from the phone, “how do you not lead with that?”

  
“It doesn’t matter, they didn’t take anything-”

  
Damon dusts his knees off, an empty gesture more signalling the amount of time he spends on his knees to have developed the automation rather than any criticism towards the state of Gabe’s flat. He returns to the sofa and sits back down next to the blonde.

  
“-anything apart from the cat you mean.”

  
They both still, perplexed.

  
“You think someone stole Leo…?”

  
“Of cour-“ Nick starts, then abruptly stops and there’s an unholy screech of the phone changing hands--

  
“-gimme. Hey, you wanted me?”

  
Gabrielle sighs.

  
Damon grins.

  
“Reality check: nobody wants you-”

  
“-but we need you,” Gabrielle finishes, probably significantly softening the blow of Damon’s hard truth at the same time as increasing the chance of Carter actually helping them.

  
“What’s going on? It’s four-”

  
“Yeah, we know what time it is, that’s not why we’re calling. We need you to hack a CCTV camera. Can you do that?”

  
“Can I-- bitch, please?!”

  
“Okay, alright. We thought so. Can you come?” Gabrielle asks, proving once again she’s the best mediator in the world and Damon sends her a quick appreciative glance before turning his attention back to the conversation.

  
“Now?”

  
“Do you have something better to do?”

  
He doesn’t. Of course.

  
Damon politely doesn’t mention that it would be really difficult to have something better to do at 4 in the morning in locked down Prague where policemen cruise around finally realising after twelve months that the government might want them to actually enforce the rules.

* * *

Ace Carter comes chaperoned by his dad, who looks better than the three of them, easily confirming that the human race reached its peak in 1960s and generation Y is nothing more than the first observable evidence of its inevitable decline.

  
While Gabrielle just looks tired but too stubborn to make a cup of coffee because at this point, her proclamations of how she didn’t drink coffee turned into a fight against societal expectations about adulthood, and it’s hilarious to watch her struggle to keep up with Ace and Damon from their high ground built on caffeine and general disregard for health.

  
The Chuck Bass-wannabe takes one look around and whips his phone out.

  
“What’re you doing?”

  
“I need to capture this for my followers.”

  
“You know we’re technically breaking law right now?” Gabrielle comments, “might not be clever to put on the Internet?”

  
Meanwhile, Nick mutters something along the lines of ‘who would be on Instagram at this time?’.

  
“Who cares! You know how difficult it is to find content after all this time stuck at home?”

  
“We just got back from Turkey, how is that being stuck at home?! You’re privileged ass gets to travel while millions of people struggle with jobs and money and you Instagram it for what? Making everybody else jealous?!”

  
“Not like you didn’t take all those selfies in face mask at the airport!”

  
“I didn’t post them on Instagram!”

  
“You thought about it!”

  
“But I didn’t!”

  
Damon sighs. “Okay guys, we’re trying to hack a security camera to track Gabe’s cat, we should get going…”

  
“Yeah, kids, let’s get rolling,” Nick claps his hands together and herds the three of them together like cattle, “no time to discuss the ever-opening ravine of wealth inequality caused by the pandemic. We have to find the cat!”

  
Ace and Gabe still glare at each other with annoyance but thanks to the only actual adult present, Ace produces a laptop out of nowhere and powers it on. He holds the device in one hand, the right flying across the keyboard putting in password. “Okay, before we start figuring out how to get to the camera, you sure he’s not inside?”

  
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Gabe answers with a roll of her eyes.

  
“Somebody would have to open the door for him to get out of the building. Who’d do that at night?”

  
“He’s smart. I wouldn’t put it past him to open the door himself. He can open the doors to the bathroom, you know.”

  
“Yeah, those doors are glued to those hinges by unicorn tears and prayers. Venus de Milo would be able to open them with no effort at all.”

  
“Leo’s smart,” the blonde stubbornly repeats, “plus, we don’t know when it happened. We’ve been gone for five days, and there had to be somebody going in or out.”

  
“Yeah, Ace!” he sides with Gabe and motions for Ace to get on.

  
With sigh, he does.

  
“It looks like it’s a wireless camera. If I get on the wifi it’s connected to, I can get inside its memory files… if it has a memory and it’s not just the cheap thing that doesn’t record, just looks cute.”

  
None of them is a tech expert, so just by looking he can tell that everybody decides to let Ace babble without interruption.

  
They’re standing outside, just by that simple fact already breaking the law. A few minutes later, with command prompt open, Ace looks deader inside than a person hooked up on Red Bull should be able to look, and before Damon has a chance to ask what’s wrong, starts a weird ritual dance. His hands held high with the laptop, he’s jumping from one foot to the other, and Gabrielle’s eyebrow flies up.

  
“Oh my, did he finally snap?”

  
“He couldn’t have! Hacking a wifi is high school stuff, that’s not a reason to lose your mind!” Nick shakes his head disappointed, before addressing his son with a laugh: “Ace, be a man! Stop embarrassing me in front of my friends!”

  
“Fuck you!” Ace shouts back and then his eyes widen and freezes in a really uncomfortable position with one hand outstretched upwards, balancing on his tiptoes ungracefully. “I needed to get signal!” And somehow, with laptop still hovering two meters off the ground, Ace turns in a way that allows him to type in the keyboard with his other hand, while looking up. They all watch him, kinda stunned by the display.

  
“So, okay, apparently, they splurged for a camera that actually works, thank God…” they are informed a few moments later.

  
It’s good that it’s 4 AM because they must look sus as hell and if Damon wasn’t one of them, he would be calling police right now. This is absolutely not what he was imagining hacking looks like, but, at the same time, he’s secretly revelling in the joy of seeing his usually idiotic friend talk about something he loves and is good at that has marginally higher added value than TikTok dances.

  
It takes longer than he thought it would - and he blames all the Hollywood movies that make hacking into a lightning-fast affair - but finally Ace relaxes.

* * *

They’re take their little party upstairs. While Gabe prepares a choice of drinks for everyone, Nick stops at the door and eyes the damage to the lock. Ace and Damon trample inside.

  
“You can leave your shoes on. Tonight,” Damon informs him cheerfully.

  
They sit on the couch and Ace opens his laptop again, not at all waiting for everyone to crowd around him before he starts typing again, using command prompt to open video files like an asshole that feels superior to the normal people who open .avi’s in file explorer.  
They learn that the camera stores each day as a separate video, with a backlog of up to week, which means-

  
“Whatever happened, it’s gonna be on here,” Gabe whispers.

  
Ace nods. He opens the first video and after five minutes of watching, increases the speed exponentially because there’s no way they’re watching a weeks-worth of artsy film of life of a doors.

  
Nothing happens on the second days as well.

  
By the fifth, Damon wishes he had popcorn because he’s getting hungry and so far they didn’t find anything suspicious. Gabrielle recognises everybody who leaves and return home, and there’s no smart cat opening the doors on its own, so at least there’s that. At some point, Nick wanders over a sits on the arm on the sofa, leaning over to see what they’re doing.

  
Nobody says anything but Damon feels everybody shifting. Gabrielle starts looking around the apartment once again. Nick yawns. Ace increases the speed ever more. Damon stops watching the video and opens his phone to order pizza because there’s no way four pairs of eyes are needed for this operation.

  
“Great, this is so thrilling. I’m really happy to be here, guys,” Ace snorts at once, when video of the fourth day comes to an end, “Gabe, you sure Leo didn’t hide out somewhere here.”

  
“I’m positive.”

  
“It’s just that it’s four days and it doesn’t look like anything’s happening.”

  
“Well, so far I’ve recognised all the people moving through there. I don’t think whoever broke into my flat was a local.”

  
Damon briefly looks up from his phone before ignoring them once again to decide whether he wants mushrooms on his pizza. He’s sorry but this task doesn’t really require his talents and since Nick might be an adult but has a love-hate relationship with what it entails, Damon graciously takes on the responsibility of keeping everyone healthy. So. Pizza.

  
Meanwhile, the discussion continues on. “You really trust your neighbours that much?”

  
“There’s not so many of them. Plus,” she smiles, “my family owns this house and everybody here knows it. There’s no way anyone would be dumb enough to pull something like that.”

  
“So, that also means that most likely, they would call your family if they saw the door broken, right?” Nick interrupts suddenly, continuing even before Gabe concurs, “that means that this most likely happened not that long ago. Ace, can you switch to today’s recording?”

  
With few commands, the most recent video opens up, speeding through the day.

  
“What am I going to get if it turns out the cat really didn’t get out?” Ace mutters towards Gabe.

  
“I’m telling you, he’s--”

  
Damon looks up at the silence.

  
His three companions are looking at the screen, all of them with wide eyes and focus rivalling Nobel-prize level astrophysicists. Damon moves over to look at whatever caught their attention.

  
There’s nothing at the screen right away but after about ten minutes - and Ace slowed the video down to normal speed - the door open and two shady figures step out. The first one quickly scans the street and moves away. The second steps behind him.

  
“You interested in those two?” Damon asks and never gets an answer because in the next instant, the first person moves away so much that they can see the other holding a swath of cloth. A towel? Damon squints at the screen, trying to make out what that bundle of joy could be.

  
“It’s LEO!” Gabrielle wails and how-- oh. There a fluffy tail angrily swinging around. You can’t see anything else but the tell tale fluffy angry duster is something Damon recognises.

  
Both figures quickly turn right and moves away from the door and, consequently, out of frame.

  
There’s silence.

  
“THEY STOLE A CAT?!” Damon sputters. He’s not alone: Ace’s winking quicky as if clearing his eyes would make the grayish figures on the screen disappear. “THEY REALLY TOOK HIM!” Gabrielle is screaming, deranged. “THEY REALLY TOOK THE CAT!!” Ace eyes widen in surprise at the same time as Gabrielle cries out once again: “they took Leo!”

  
“Why the hell would anyone steal a cat?!”

  
“Hey! I’ll have you know he’s Norwegian forest cat. Very rare in our country!”

  
“Whatever.”

  
The only person not currently suffering from a premature heart attack is Nick. He’s looking at the screenshot with a frown, his posture practically begging them to turn to him once they persuade their hearts not to leave for the shiny lands of heavens.

  
He sighs. Gabe and Ace haven’t notice so far, but Damon turns to him: “there’s no way you know something about why they might want to steal Leo?”

  
The old man’s eyes shift and he doesn’t quite look at them. “Yeah, about that…”

  
“You know something we don’t?” Ace rounds on his father immediately without remorse, which Damon kind of admires. Gabrielle shoots Nick another sharp look.

  
His uncle is one of the most easily read people Damon knows. Where both his father and other uncle could win international poker tournaments if they really wanted, Nick was the big-letter first-grade book, with pictures of every word written there. So when the fifty-something shifts on the armrest and ruefully scratches his head, Damon braces himself for the news.

  
“It might have belonged to an oligarch… at some point… in its life… before… you know, ending up with Gabe. So… yeah, there’s that.”

  
They stare.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have the story all written up yet but it's not supposed to be that long and philosophical. Short funny stories are a new territory for me so let me know if I failed completely.


End file.
